It’s Friday, so I decided to walk to Baby Greens to get lunch, as I often do at the end of the week. As I walked, I kept an eye out for fallen pecans to take home and leave out for our squirrels.
I saw one at the end of the street, and picked it up. As I did so, I heard a noise. I looked up, and a squirrel was sitting in the pecan tree, barking at me for stealing his nut. I tossed it back on the ground. He stopped and stared at me. I apologized and walked on.
Spotted today in our back yard: a black squirrel. Sadly, he had disappeared into next door’s yard by the time I thought to grab the camera.
Breakfast with a squirrel. Experimenting with the new MPEG-4 camcorder.
On Friday, I was gazing out into the back yard when I saw a hawk swoop towards the house, turn to the side at the last moment, and try to grab a squirrel from the fence.
I’m glad to report that he failed, but the squirrel was clearly very disturbed by his near death encounter. He leapt onto the trunk of the nearest tree, and called out—a type of sound I hadn’t heard from a squirrel before. It was a kind of squeak, starting low in pitch and going higher. I’m assuming it’s squirrel for “Holy crap, guys, look out, there’s a bird of prey around!”
So, we finally found a builder who was interested in fixing up our decks. He sent waterproof deck coating samples, returned telephone calls, quoted a price, all the things I was naïvely expecting builders to do when I started the quest.
This morning he turned up with 3 friends at 7am to start work. I guess in Texas you have to get the work done early, before the temperature gets too high.
So it was that I came to be awake early enough to see a baby squirrel, the first youngster to visit us. He was exploring next door’s fig tree, learning how to not fall off branches. Meanwhile, a couple of adult squirrels were moving from fig to fig, testing each one to see if it was ripe.
After a while the youngster moved onto the front lawn to frolic. He rolled in the grass, ran around in circles, and practiced leaping from ground to telegraph pole and back. He also tried some gratuitous hole-digging; clearly somewhere in his genetic code is the knowledge that squirrels dig. When he masters food-gathering, he should be ready to learn burying.
Squirrels don’t hibernate during winter, but they do slow down their metabolism to conserve energy. Research suggests that their immune systems partially shut down as a result. Perhaps for this reason, squirrels often develop mange in winter.
Our resident alpha squirrel, Blacktip, developed a bad case of fur loss over winter. It started on his neck and chest, but soon spread to his belly and thighs, leaving him pink and itchy. Apparently squirrels usually recover on their own once spring arrives, but this particular critter showed no signs of getting better. I took the feed box away so he wouldn’t spread whatever it was to the other squirrels, and considered my options.
After reading everything I could find on the Internet about squirrel fur loss, it seemed pretty clear that the culprit in this case was notoedric mange–the symptoms matched exactly. Further research revealed that there is a common animal parasite medication that is used to treat notoedric mange in squirrels, as well as in rabbits, rats, and other small mammals. It was pretty cheap, too. The information available on the net suggested weekly doses, for a period of 2-3 weeks. It seemed doable.
We just filled 7× 110 liter paper sacks with fallen leaves from the back yard. We still have plenty of leaves, but we ran out of sacks.
On Saturday it rained. I’m not sure if it was that or SXSW, but for whatever reason the squirrels all came out to play. We had all 5 of the regulars feeding at once. Chasing and comical feeding antics ensued.
The high point was when one squirrel was sitting on the squirrel-a-whirl, looking over the hub and down at the corn below. Another squirrel rushed up from behind and gave him a shove, and suddenly he was a flying squirrel.
Blacktip seems to have ceded his position of Alpha Squirrel to Tiny, our squirrel ninja whose leaps of over a meter put the others to shame. Tiny is feared by all the other squirrels—except Frida, who is apparently too psycho to give in.
The squirrels also fought off a blue jay and some grackles. It was like an urban wildlife documentary out there.
No squirrelfest photos, I’m afraid. I need a telephoto lens, but that’ll have to wait until I can sell the film SLR.
So, back yards with trees have pluses as well as minuses.
[P.S.: Cool squirrel T-shirt reprinted at Threadless, and on sale.]
We got some things called “Squirrel Logs“. They’re supposed to last as long as 12-24 ears of corn. Given the rate at which our half dozen fluffy friends go through corn, that seemed like a convenient idea.
I tried hanging one from the bungee. No deal, it seemed that they would definitely last 12x as long as corn, because the squirrels wouldn’t touch ‘em. They went straight for the corn on the squirrel-a-whirl instead, and even after eating it they continued to climb out on the whirl and sniff the corn husks rather than eat the log.
I wondered if it might just be too much work for them to knaw at the log while bouncing up and down on a spring, so I decided I needed to rig up a makeshift holder for the log—something that would stop Blacktip from trying to drag the entire thing away. I also realized they’d be more likely to sit around and chow if the log was above ground level, out of the reach of the neighbor’s cat.
I picked a sturdy chunk of wood out of the trash near a local building site, and drilled two holes in it about 1cm apart. I threaded some steel cable through one hole, through the squirrel log, through a metal hex nut, back down through the log, and then through the other hole in the wood. I twist-tied the cable underneath the wood and duct taped it out of harm’s way. Then, I positioned the wood platform over the metal fence, and attached one end to a post of the wooden fence behind the metal fence, with a small right-angle bracket. (I’m not sure why we have two fences.)
The result allows the squirrels to climb on via the fences, and sit and gnaw at the log in comfort. They can grab it and move it around, but can’t actually drag it away.
We haven’t seen Blacktip in a couple of weeks. I’m wondering if something has happened to him. I’ll put corn out all weekend, and if he doesn’t show, I think it’ll be time to put the feed box back. Frida is still a regular visitor, and we’ve also seen a new smallish squirrel with a thick tail, who had trouble working out the whole bungee thing.
From Russia via the BBC, news that a pack of squirrels joined forces and killed a dog that had been barking at them. Let’s just say I’m a bit skeptical.
Meanwhile, not much sign of The Twins recently. I think one of them might have been the squirrel I saw flattened down the street. Longtail and Blacktip visit regularly. Tiny too, though he doesn’t like the feed box, and we’ve run low on corn cobs.
Blacktip is still bulking up for winter. He now has jowls, and rolls of fat across his belly. The other squirrels don’t seem to be fattening up nearly as much. He brought the surviving twin with him once to feed, and the two of them climbed in the feeding box together. Incredibly cute.
A couple of days ago we had a brand new squirrel appear. A female, I think—I couldn’t see any nuts. She has a somewhat stripey tail, and patches of dark fur above her eyes which make it look like she has big bushy eyebrows. I’ve named her Frida, after Frida Kahlo, whose image is scattered all over Austin.
Update: Squirrels seen humping on 2005-10-13. Additional squirrels likely. FYI gestation period around 44 days, followed by 2-3 months of weaning.
Blacktip is the Alpha Squirrel. His tail is rough in shape at the end, as if he has lost part of it, and black at the tip. His preferred feeding technique is to climb the slippery pole the squirrel bungee is suspended from, lean out, grab the bungie cable with his front paws, reel in the corncob, and try to chew off some corn before his back paws lose grip. He doesn’t like the feed box much; he doesn’t like leaning into it, and doesn’t like climbing in all the way, so he ends up a squirrel sandwich between the box and the lid.
Longtail was the first squirrel to work out the feed box. He usually climbs all the way in, picks up some food, then sticks out his head to chew, watching for approaching enemies from inside the box. His bungee technique is to jump very slightly, grab the bottom of the corncob, and then climb paw-over-paw until he’s dangling in the air and gently bobbing. He’ll then grab some corn, drop to the ground, and eat it there. He also likes sunbathing on tree branches.
The Twins are almost impossible to tell apart. They’re mostly seen chasing each other from tree to tree. At least one of them feeds at the box by leaning all the way in, leaving his butt sticking out. One time Twin #1 was feeding, and Twin #2 approached and shoved the lid down on him with a paw. A major chase ensued.
Tiny is a new arrival, first seen today. He’s smaller than all the others, but fiesty—as I replaced the corncob, he sat on the tree a meter away and growled at me. I’m guessing he’s a squirrel teenager acting out, or maybe he’s just angry because he hasn’t worked out how to open the box yet. He’s also the squirrel seen humping another squirrel.